1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to billing for printing costs, and, in particular, to a system and method for billing for printing service costs by examining the content of a page.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern color printing systems mark a substrate with patterns of lines or small dots of oval or round shape onto the printing substrate (e.g., such as paper). The color printing system can mark the printing substrate with multiple colors of ink or toner called colorants. Although most color printing systems have only four primary colors of toner (or ink), a much wider variety of colors are available for color perception because of physiological and psychophysical aspects of human color vision.
The colors of toner (or ink) chosen to create the wider variety of perceived colors is generally referred to as the color gamut. The most typically used color gamut is the “CMYK” color gamut. The “C” refers to Cyan toner, the “M” refers to “Magenta” toner, the “Y” refers to the “Yellow” toner, and the “K” refers to the “Black” toner. Although there are three types of color receptors in the human eye (and one additional type of receptor for night vision), four toner colors are generally used because black toners are generally cheaper, and it is more efficient to use a black toner than to combine the cyan, magenta, and yellow toners to make a black color, e.g., a black toner dries faster than when combing the three aforementioned toners to make a black marking on a substrate. The cost of the toner (or ink) should be taken into consideration when printing color and/or monochrome pages.
However, the cost of the toner is generally only about 20% to 30% of the total cost per printing substrate (e.g., a page can be printed on a substrate) that is incurred when using a printing system. One business model employed by manufacturers of printing systems is to lease (becoming the “lessor”) a printing system to the end user and charge a monthly “use” fee and a “service” fee. The “use” fee is generally fixed; however, the “service” fee includes estimated fixed and variable costs, and a profit margin. Some of the estimated costs that are included in the service fee are toner usage costs, technician costs, repair costs, IT infrastructure costs, field offices costs, managers' and engineers' salaries, parts costs, labor costs, and the like (generally the end user pays for the printing substrate, e.g., paper, however, some end users may contract otherwise).
If the agreed upon fee structure is not properly calculated, the actual costs may exceed expectations reducing the profit margin (possibly causing the lessor to incur a loss). Additionally, an improperly calculated service fee can cause a particular end user to pay more than their proportionate service usage. Thus, miscalculated service costs increase market inefficiencies into the printing system's market. To mitigate the risk of loss to a lessor and to provide the lessee (i.e., end user) with a proportionate service fee, the service cost generally includes a “per click” fee. This fee can facilitate efficient allocation of the resources of both parties.
This “per click” fee is an additional fee that is applied to each particular piece of printed page. The per click fee includes an estimated toner cost, a risk premium cost, and a profit margin. The risk premium cost is an estimated service cost that a particular piece of printing substrate will probabilistically cause the lessor to incur a service expense. Printing a color page has a higher probability of incurring additional service costs as compared to printing a monochrome page.
One approach is to charge a “per click” fee of a fixed amount when an end user prints a page that is purely monochrome, and to charge a different amount for the “per click” fee when printing a color page. This is referred to as the “one size fits all billing approach” and is simply billing one fee for printed monochrome pages and another fee for printed color pages, regardless of the content in the printed page. For example, the “per click” fee may be $0.01 (U.S) per monochrome printed page and $0.08 (U.S.) per color printed page.
The “one size fits all billing approach” does not generally take into account the objects that are in the page. For example, there are several types of monochrome and/or color objects that can be printed onto a substrate. Some of the types of objects that may be printed are: monochrome contone objects, color contone objects, monochrome text objects, color text objects, monochrome line art objects, color line art objects, monochrome graphic objects, color graphic objects, monochrome low frequency halftone objects, color low frequency halftone objects, monochrome high frequency halftone objects, color high frequency halftone objects, monochrome solid fill objects, and color solid fill objects.
In one exemplary prior art method, an approximation of the service cost associated with a particular printed page is made by applying a cost function that uses the aggregate toner area of coverage of the printed page, the printing medium substrate dimensions, and the finishing options applied. The aggregate toner area of coverage may be approximated by counting the aggregate number of color pixels (e.g., counting the number of the CMYK pixels within an object).
The prior art method does not take into account how the color pixels are distributed in a page (e.g., how the pixels are distributed and/or clustered), the kinds of objects in the page the pixels are used to form, and the pixel density.